


oh no

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Mental Health Issues, implied suicidal ideation, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24185638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Joey has a sudden thought during a meeting and it scares him.Henry goes to comfort him.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	oh no

It stung.

Like a slap on the cheek.

He looked at his hands and felt his throat go dry.

“Mr. Drew!”

He looked up. He had an empty expression as he turned to some nobody, a faceless puppet sitting at the meeting table with a slightly frustrated grimace. Whoever that might have been spoke again, repeating the same question they’d asked before, and again he didn’t hear it. Some kind of noise buzzed perfectly silent in his ears covering everything in a thick wooly coat.

Bertrum Piedmont, sitting precise and clean as he always did, furrowed his eyebrows with concern. Next to him, the manager was slumped graceless on her seat, not blinking, spaced out enough to seem dead.

“Are you alright?”

The older man’s words reached him slow and malleable, like play-dough stretched underwater or a jar of honey being opened in an orbiting space station.

He gulped down saliva, mucus, and a sphere of nails.

“Excuse me.”

He limped his way out of the room. His finger shook as if overtaken by a fever across his phone’s contacts. Silence ringtone, select, wait, one two three rings going off in his ear without any kind of answer and maybe no answer with just a disappearance would be better, four five take up right as six starts, Hello?

“All canceled.”

“What-?”

“Won’t come over again.”

Hang up.

He leaned heavily on the wall and listened to his breath.

Loud.

Wheezy.

He felt like collapsing.

He didn’t go back in. Barely opened the door and peeked his head in.

“I’m sorry, we’ll have to reschedule this meeting.” his voice was a shaky breath. At least three fourths of the people present would have never thought him capable of speaking like that. “I’m not feeling well. Have a good day.”

He retreated into his office immediately.

Henry found him with his head on his desk and a pen clutched so tightly in his hand it was about to break in half.

The animator looked around. The phone screen was lit up.

“You have five missed calls from your psychologist.”

A sobbed hum.

“And a couple of messages. Still from your psychologist.”

The latino grabbed a chair with all the calm of the world. He settled it next to the taller man, elbows propped on his own thighs so that his fist could sustain his head, and stared with his warm brown eyes.

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to die.”

What vague smile he might have had dropped.

Another shuddering breath and finally Joey lifted his head. He was scared.

“I don’t want to die.” he murmured again as plumper arms wrapped around him. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to get hurt, I don’t want to die.”

“I know. I know.”

“Then why do I want to?”

He was scared.

“Why do I think these things?”

“Breathe. Keep breathing.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“I know, I trust you.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I know. You’re my friend, I trust you.”

The tears calmed down slowly, slowly, slowly.

“What happened with the psychologist?”

A murmur.

“Joey. I won’t be mad or anything.”

“I canceled all appointments.”

“Why?”

“It fucked me up. Fucked me up bad.”

“You said it was going well.”

“I know, I just… It was because I stopped writing and I thought it was a good thing and I thought I felt good and I…”

Henry had a smell to him. Joey hated strong smells, and Henry’s wasn’t strong at all. It was weird, too. It was the kind of smell of old and wooden infrastructures and golden sun beams peering through windows that attics right under the roof of old grandparents’ mountain houses have.

He swallowed again, and the ball of nails scratched a little less inside his neck.

“What happened then?”

Henry had a voice to him. The kind of voice of a step-brother acquired after a re-marriage, who likes you on the spot, who you have fun with, who you never had.

He huffed. He still sounded trembling.

“I feel worse. I want to leave everything. I can’t put up a mask and act when I need to like when I get really anxious in front of other people, because it’s a bad thing and I need to cut it out of me, and I can’t write all these thoughts that scare me away from me how I used to, because it’s a bad thing and I need to cut it out of me, and I get just stuck with all of these things and no way to get away from them at the worst of times. I put all my energy in the things I shouldn’t. I don’t want to think. I’m tired of thinking. I’m tired of thinking all the time to keep my mind off of whatever is wrong with me, because the damn thing just comes back up when I don’t expect it and it scares me to death.”

Henry had soft hands, although slightly calloused. They were good at several things, and one of them was drawing circles - both on paper and on the back of those who needed comfort. Joey had his face sunk in his friend’s shoulder, now silent, eyes dried of tears.

He was safe.

“We’ll find a better psychologist now.”

“No.”

“Joey, you need one.”

“No, please. No.”

“I can’t help with everything.”

“They make it worse.”

“This one made it worse, another one might actually help.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“I assure you it does. It’s just like shopping for clothes, you need to find the ones that fit. Except the clothers are psychologists.”

No answer.

“Promise you’ll try. At least try.”

“… I’ll try.”

“Alright.”

“Not. Not yet. But I’ll try. I’ll… I’ll see other things for now. Like those… Those messages things.”

“Where you message a hotline when you don’t feel like talking?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s good already.”


End file.
